2018 Award Recipients

The 2018 Patents for Humanity awards recognize nine recipients and six honorable mentions.

An award ceremony honoring the award winners was held on Tuesday, November 27, 2018 in Alexandria, Virginia. 

 

Drugs & vaccines icon  Medicine 

Medtronic 

For creating a portable, low-water kidney dialysis machine for potential use in a wide variety of care settings, including those that lack the infrastructure required for traditional dialysis.

National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIH/NIAID) and Serum Institute of India Pvt. Ltd. 

For creating a low-cost, temperature tolerant rotavirus vaccine for use in developing countries, with 3.8 million doses ordered by the government of India’s childhood immunization program.

Little Sparrows Technologies

For creating a portable low-cost phototherapy device for treating jaundice in infants, which causes 100,000 newborn deaths a year.

Clean Tech icon Sanitation

Kinnos Inc.

For creating time-sensitive color chemicals to ensure proper disinfection procedures by health workers in Ebola treatment centers and other health care settings.

Russell Crawford

For creating tools for low-cost drilling of water wells to reach deep aquifers free from soil contaminants.

Nutrition icon Nutrition

Brooklyn Bridge to Cambodia Inc

For creating an affordable rice planting device that helps Cambodian farmers improve their crop yields, and which minimizes the number of farmers, mostly women, who have to work in the most exhausting and unhealthy conditions.

Energy icon Energy

Solight Design

For designing a portable solar light that has been distributed to over 200,000 people worldwide including many in refugee camp.

Sanivation LLC

For designing a waste processing plant that transforms human waste into sanitary briquettes that replace wood and charcoal for heating and cooking, with four plants serving 10,000 people in Kenya by the end of the year.

Living Standards icon Living Standards

Because International

For distributing 180,000 pairs of resizable shoes in over 95 countries, with local manufacturing taking place in Ethiopia and plans for Haiti and Kenya.

 

Learn more about the 2018 winners

 

 

Honorable Mentions

  • Shift Labs for developing an electronic device that monitors the amount of intravenous medication given during gravity infusions to replace un-monitored delivery in areas with healthcare worker shortages. 

  • Case Western Reserve University for creating a portable, quick hemoglobin scanner that can detect sickle cell and other blood conditions

  • Vanderbilt University for distributing antibodies for Zika virus to other researchers to develop vaccines and treatments

  • Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for creating a low-cost, simple-to-assemble, and easy-to-maintain mosquito trap to reduce the spread of diseases in resource limited settings.

  • Folia Water Inc. for developing an inexpensive paper water filter and holder that is affordable to low income customers and can be distributed to urban and remote areas for removing pathogens

  • Prof Arup SenGupta of Lehigh University for creating economically sustainable Hybrid Ion Exchange Nanotechnology to mitigate arsenic and fluoride crisis of contaminated groundwater in South & Southeast Asia.

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